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Qualcomm’s own Pixtronix and Sharp have collaborated on an all-new display that keeps image quality high while power consumption stays low.

Some displays technologies consume more power than others, but with each iteration there are drops in power consumption and gains in image quality, but for some time there has been no dramatic changes in the progress of this technology — we’ve gotten marginal gains each generation, not dramatic jumps. Now, a new display technology might be a huge step forward in that constant battery struggle, by combining IGZO display tech with microscopic MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) shutters.

The display is by far the most power hungry part of most portable devices, be they laptops or smartphones or tablets. There’s typically a balance between brightness and image quality that needs to be maintained for an optimal experience, but doing so often means you’re eating through battery at an accelerated rate, especially as resolution increases.

Most displays right now use a backlight to push the color in the display out to the user. This light is constant, and is increased or decreased across the whole panel based on the needs of the user. This new display is a little different. Red, green, blue and white LEDs are assembled for each pixel on the display, with a microscopic shutter that controls how much light is reaching the user.

IGZO is used as the semiconductor material, which means not only will the display be using this new power reducing shutter tech but it will also be functional in a significantly wider variety of temperatures.

This isn’t display tech that is right around the corner. As the Sharp representative in the video stated, the big thing right now is getting the yield up when actually creating the displays. The goods news is that it is possible to create these displays, fixing yield issues will simply allow Sharp to reduce the cost of producing the displays to the point where they are cheap enough to make their way into non-specialty devices.

This could wind up being the next popular screen tech within the next couple of years, which would ultimately mean a much better mobile experience overall.